But Oleyar and fellow trappers hope to be skinning some other animals soon.

Ten years after voters put a partial trapping ban into the state constitution, the practi tioners of Colorado’s oldest trade are calling for a new season on mink, swift fox and other mammals with valued pelts.

Their petition to the Colorado Wildlife Commission has reignited a debate between those content to admire wildlife through binoculars and those who see it as something to wear or eat.

“The trappers never accepted the outcome of the ballot initiative,” said Colorado Wildlife Alliance president Dave Jones.

“They’ve been whittling away at it, and now they’re going to see if they can kick the door open,” Jones said.

The Colorado Trappers Association was born 31 years ago at a Park County campground.

A small band of men decided Colorado should have a trappers’ group and called an organizing rendezvous in Fairplay.

To their surprise, they awoke in the morning to find a valley filled with 200 campers.

In 1995, the wildlife commission shut down recreational harvests of the animals the trappers now want to hunt.

A year later, 52 percent of Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment banning the taking of wildlife with leghold traps, lethal body-gripping traps, snares or poisons.

The amendment had exemptions for livestock and crop protection, human health and safety, scientific research and animal relocations.

It did not mention box traps – baited cages – which are now widely used.

Colorado trapping survived on those exceptions.

The 350 association members sell much of what they still trap at the National Western Stock Show in Denver and at a yearly auction.

This year’s auction brought in $104,664 from 18 species of fur, plus some antlers, skulls and horns.

Coyote pelts, 1,530 of them, led the sales. Auction prices ranged from 25 cents for a muskrat pelt to $550 for a bobcat skin.

Oleyar, who began animal trapping as a kid in suburban Virginia, says the state wildlife commission wrongly halted recreational trapping.

Mink, marten, foxes and weasels “are flourishing,” he said. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t trap some of them.”

Oleyar said a trapper’s killing method is no crueler than hunting elk with a rifle.

“I believe in utilizing wildlife. I like to hunt and eat what I hunt,” Oleyar said.

“Beaver is excellent. Bobcat and mountain lion are excellent. Muskrat is superb,” he said. “Coyotes are really rank.”

The renewed battle over trapping began in February with a one-page, handwritten request from the Colorado Trappers Association to the wildlife commission to add to the trapping list: weasels, martens, mink, gray foxes, opossums and spotted skunks.

The proposal also suggested trapping could help provide population data on the species.

“Since we’re the trappers’ association, everyone’s going ballistic,” said Marvin Miller, who made the request.

Sinapu, a Boulder-based wildlife advocacy group, says the proposed trapping would violate the state constitution and the research rationale is suspicious.

“We have concerns about the well-being of these populations,” said Wendy Keefover- Ring, Sinapu’s carnivore protection director.

“Then there’s the ethical issue: whether we should allow these animals to be trapped and harvested for their fur,” she said.

The Colorado Wildlife Commission, a governor-appointed body, is expected to vote on the trapping petition in July.

At the commission’s request, the Colorado Division of Wildlife drafted regulations for trapping three of the requested animals.

The division staff, however, recommended that there be no expansion of trapping.

David Olinger is an investigative journalist who has worked for newspapers in New Hampshire, Florida and Colorado since 1976. In 18 years in Colorado, he has covered a variety of subjects for The Denver Post.

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